Azure Virtual Machine

Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) are among the most popular and widely used services in the Azure cloud platform. They provide an easy and efficient way to create and deploy virtual machines in the cloud, enabling businesses to move their workloads to the cloud and reduce their on-premises infrastructure costs. In this article, we will look in-depth at Azure VMs, covering everything from their key features and benefits to their architecture and management.

Scalability

Azure VMs can be scaled up or down as needed, allowing businesses to adjust their computing resources to match their workload demands efficiently. 

Flexibility

Azure VMs support a wide range of operating systems, programming languages, and applications, making it easy for businesses to migrate their existing workloads to the cloud without compatibility issues.

Availability

Azure VMs are designed to be highly available, with built-in redundancy features that ensure that your VMs are always available, even in the event of hardware failures or other disruptions.

Cost-effectiveness

Azure VMs offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model, meaning businesses only pay for the computing resources they use without any upfront costs or long-term commitments.

Azure Virtual Machine Architecture

Azure VMs are built on a hyper-scale cloud platform designed for reliability, scalability, and performance. The architecture of Azure VMs is based on a series of interconnected components, including the following:

Virtual Machines

This is the main component of the Azure VM architecture. Virtual machines are created by selecting an operating system, configuring the virtual hardware, and deploying the machine to a virtual network.

Virtual Networks

They allow you to create and manage your network topology and configure connectivity to other virtual networks, on-premises networks, and the internet.

Storage Accounts

Storage accounts provide a scalable and durable storage solution for your virtual machines. 

Availability Sets

Availability sets provide a way to distribute virtual machines across multiple physical servers in a data center, ensuring high availability and redundancy.

Load Balancers

Load balancers provide a way to distribute network traffic across multiple virtual machines, ensuring high availability and scalability.

Virtual Machine Extensions

Virtual machine extensions provide additional functionality to your virtual machines, such as software updates, monitoring, and management.

Azure Virtual Machine Management

Azure VMs can be managed using various tools and techniques, depending on your needs and preferences. Here are some of the key management options available for Azure VMs:

Azure Portal

The Azure Portal is a web-based management console with a graphical user interface for managing your Azure resources, including virtual machines.

Azure CLI

The Azure CLI is a command-line interface that provides a powerful and flexible way to manage your Azure resources, including virtual machines.

Azure PowerShell

Azure PowerShell is a scripting language and command-line interface that can automate the management of your Azure resources, including virtual machines.

Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets

Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets provide an easy way to create and manage.

Creating an Azure Virtual Machine (VM) from the command line requires using Azure CLI. Here are the steps to create an Azure VM from the command line,

Install Azure CLI

If you haven't installed Azure CLI on your local machine, you can follow the installation guide on the Azure documentation website.

Login to Azure

Open a command prompt or terminal window and enter the command az login. This will prompt you to enter your Azure credentials, username, and password.

Create a resource group

To create a VM, you must create a resource group to host it. Use the following command to create a new resource group:

In this example, "MyResourceGroup" is the name of the resource group, and "eastus" is the location where the resource group will be created.

Create a virtual network

Next, you need to create a virtual network for your VM using the following command:

In this example, "MyVnet" is the name of the virtual network, and "MySubnet" is the name of the subnet within the virtual network.

Create a public IP address

To assign a public IP address to your VM, use the following command:

In this example, "MyPublicIP" is the name of the public IP address, and "Standard" is the SKU.

Create a network security group

You can create a network security group using the following command:

In this example, "MyNSG" is the name of the network security group.

Create a virtual machine

Finally, you can create the virtual machine using the following command:

In this example, "MyVM" is the name of the virtual machine, "UbuntuLTS" is the image used to create the VM, "azureuser" is the username of the administrator, "Standard_DS1_v2" is the VM size, and "--generate-ssh-keys" will automatically create SSH keys for you.

Summary

That's it! You have now created an Azure VM from the command line. You can manage your VM using Azure CLI or any other management tool that supports Azure resources.